Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's IIS is Twice as Likely to Host Malware?
eldavojohn writes "According to Google, Microsoft's server software is at least twice as likely to host viruses or malware. The reason why? 'Google reports that IIS is likely used to distribute malware more often than Apache because many IIS installs are on pirated Windows versions which aren't configured to automatically download patches. (Even pirated Windows versions can automatically receive security fixes, however.) Our analysis demonstrates how important it is to keep web servers patched to the latest patch level,' Google notes."
Ah. So google's researchers came to an obvious conclusion: The most popular operating system being run by people who can't be bothered to patch it is prone to being used to distribute malware.
Bravo.
No?
Then it looks like the GPL does in fact restrict what you can do with any piece of GPL'd code.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
1) According to netcraft there are many more apache installs (almost 2 to 1) than IIS installs on the internet.
2) Most malware distribution occurs from hacked sites. If you build your own web server and host malware on it, it is much easier for someone to find you and prosecute you. If you hack thousands of computers and let them distribute your malware, there is at least 1 level of indirection that someone must follow to find you. I doubt very many malware distributors set stuff up on their own servers, and if they do, they are either using pirated windows copies (as stated in the article) or a free unix variant, malware distributors don't have million dollar IT budgets.
As for your last point, what has MS created? EVER? Windows 3.1 cheap, crappy Mac OS clone, Office cheap crappy word perfect clone, Windows 95, another try to clone Mac OS. IE? netscape clone.
MS should go down in history not for being a monopoly, not for making good software, but as the largest company ever to be so completely incompetent at R&D and innovation. Even AT&T at its height was creating new things, useful things that people still use today. IBM, same thing. These huge monopolies of yore at least lived up to what monopolies are supposed to do. In an economic sense, monopolies charge higher prices, but they are supposed to take that added profit and plow it into R&D to maintain their dominant position and continually keep would be entrants at a disadvantage. Most of the huge monopolies of the 1900's (including AT&T and IBM) lived up to this. MS fails this test miserably. They take their excess profits and give a one time 30 billion dollar dividend? What kind of crap is that, hire 10,000 programmers for 5 years and see what they come up with. That move right there says either MS thinks there is absolutely nothing in computing that needs to be solved or figured out (completely impossible), or b that they admit they are completely incompetent at R&D and give up on trying to make something new and innovative.